Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T20:39:53.225Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women and the Changing Urban Household Economy in Tanzania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Aili Mari Tripp
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Women in Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, used to be described as ‘relatively inactive’ as regards paid work or self-employment.1 One study undertaken in 1971 found that only one-fifth of urban women were either working for wages (13 per cent) or earning their own sources of income (7 per cent).2 The situation could not have been more different in the late 1980s, with as many as 66 per cent in Dar es Salaam being self-employed. Although about the same proportion of women were in some kind of paid employment as during the previous decade, it appeared that since then many of them had been leaving their place of work to farm and to engage in small income-generating projects, known as miradi midogo midogo or shughuli ndogo ndogo in Kiswahili3.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 601 - 623
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bryceson, Deborah Fahy and Swantz, Marja-Liisa, ‘Women Workers in Dar es Salaam’, Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning, University of Dar es Salaam, 1976;Google ScholarSwantz, Marja-Liisa, Women in Development: a creative role denied? The Case of Tanzania (London and New York, 1985), pp. 129–30;Google Scholar and Westergaard, Margaret, ‘Women and Work in Dar es Salaam’, Department of Sociology, University of Dar es Salaam, 1970, p. 7.Google Scholar

2 Sabot, Richard H., Economic Development and Urban Migration: Tanzania, 1900–1971 (Oxford, 1979), p. 92.Google Scholar

3 Ministry of Finance, Bureau of Statistics, Planning and Economic Affairs, Statistical Abstract (Dar es Salaam, 1984).Google Scholar

4 Tripp, Aili Mari, ‘The Informal Economy, Labor and State in Tanzania’, Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 1989.Google Scholar

5 E.g. Little, Kenneth, African Women in Towns: an aspect of Africa's social revolution (Cambridge, 1973), p. 29,Google Scholar and Pellow, Deborah, Women in Accra: options for autonomy (Algonac, 1977), p. 26.Google Scholar

6 Sabot, op. cit. p. 92, and Swantz, op. cit. p. 130.

7 Robertson, Claire and Berger, Iris (eds.), Women and Class in Africa (New York, 1986), p. 17.Google Scholar

8 Weiner, Annette B., Women of Value, Men of Renown (Austin, 1976), pp. 228–9.Google Scholar

9 Obbo, Christine, African Women: their struggle for economic independence (London, 1980), pp. 102 and 156.Google Scholar

10 Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Affairs, Bureau of Statistics, 1988 Population Census: preliminary report (Dar es Salaam, 1989).Google Scholar

11 Kulaba, Saitiel, ‘Local Government and the Management of Urban Services in Tanzania’, in Stren, Richard E. and White, Rodney R. (eds.), African Cities in Crisis: managing rapid urban growth (Boulder, San Francisco, and London, 1989), p. 212,Google Scholar and Tibaijuka, Anna K., ‘The Impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes on Women: the case of Tanzania's Economic Recovery Programme’, Economic Research Bureau, University of Dar es Salaam, for the Canadian International Development Agency.Google Scholar

12 Ellis, Frank, ‘Relative Agricultural Process and the Urban Bias Model: a comparative analysis of Tanzania and Fiji’, in Journal of Development Studies (London), 20, 3, 1984, pp. 28–51.Google Scholar

13 United Republic of Tanzania, , Economic Survey: 1979–1984 (Dar es Salaam, 1984).Google Scholar

14 International Labour Organisation Yearbook of Labour Statistics (Geneva, 1987),Google Scholar and Stein, Howard, ‘The Economics of the State and the IMF in Tanzania’, African Studies Association Meeting, Chicago, 1988, p. 18.Google Scholar

15 Bryceson, Deborah Fahy, ‘A Century of Food Supply in Dar es Salaam: from sumptuous suppers for the Sultan to maize meal for a million’, in Guyer, Jane I. (ed.), Feeding African Cities: studies in regional social history (Manchester, 1987), p. 174.Google Scholar

16 Leslie, J. A. K., A Survey of Dar es Salaam (Oxford, 1963), pp. 168–9 and 226;Google Scholar Olof Lindberg, quoted by Swantz, op. cit. p. 129; Mbilinyi, Marjorie, ‘This is an Unforgettable Business: colonial state intervention in urban Tanzania’, in Parpart, Jane L. and Staudt, K. A. (eds.), Women and the State in Africa (Boulder, 189), pp. 116–22.Google Scholar

17 Sabot, op. cit.

18 Westergaard, op. cit. p. 7.

19 Lindberg, quoted in Swantz, op. cit. p. 129.

20 Sabot, Richard, ‘Open Unemployment and the Employed Compound of Urban Surplus Labour’, Economic Research Bureau, University of Dar es Salaam, 1974, p. 8.Google Scholar

21 Bureau of Statistics, Planning and Economic Affairs, op. cit.

22 Bryceson, Deborah Fahy, ‘The Proletarianisation of Women in Tanzania’, in Review of African Political Economy (Sheffield), 17, 1980, pp. 20–1,Google Scholar and ‘Women's Proletarianisation and the Family Wage in Tanzania’, in Afshar, Haleh (ed.), Women, Work and Ideology in the Third World (New York, 1985), p. 142;Google Scholarand Swantz, op. cit. pp. 150–1.Google Scholar

23 International Labour Organisation, Basic Needs in Danger: a basic needs oriented development strategy for Tanzania (Addis Ababa, 1982), p. 270.Google Scholar

24 Leslie, op. cit. p. 226.

25 Swantz, op. cit. p. 141.

26 Reports of Bashemerewa, Vivian, Masaiganah, Mwajuma S., and Tungaraza, Frida D., compiled in Swantz, Marja-Liisa, ‘The Role of Women in Tanzanian Fishing Societies: a study of the socioeconomic context and the situation of women in three coastal fishing villages in Tanzania’, Institute of Development Studies, Women's Study Group, University of Dar es Salaam, 1986, pp. 84, 92, and 96.Google Scholar

27 Swantz, op. cit. pp. 55–6.

28 Shaidi, Leonard P., ‘Legal Conrol of Surplus Labour in Tanzania's Urban Centres’, Workshop on Social Problems in Eastern Africa, Arusha, 1987.Google Scholar

29 African Business (London), 12 1983, p. 59.Google Scholar

30 Kerner, Donna O., ‘“Hard Work” and the Informal Sector Trade in Tanzania’, in Clark, Gracia (ed.), Traders versus the State (Boulder, 1988), p. 53,Google Scholar and Daily News (Dar es Salaam), 2 05 1987.Google Scholar

31 Daily News, 2 May 1987.